Customer Reviews

Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will (Modern European Philosophy)

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Pretty good for the first two thirds, this quickly becomes incomprehensible and repetitive. Zoller knows his stuff, and does a great job summarizing the arguments in the introductions to Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre; he also does a decent job summarizing the arguments in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. In fact, re-reading the introductions after this book makes me wonder if this introduction is really necessary, since I doubt it will be any easier to understand than Fichte himself for anyone not already hip to the new Kantianising interpretations of Fichte and Hegel and so on. But that's probably because I can see what's going on in the introductions very clearly now I've read this book.

The problem is that once Fichte decides that Pure Will will solve the circularity of thought and willing, and that Pure Will is kind of like God, the whole project comes to seem utterly beyond human ken. I guess that's why Hegel came along. But Zoller doesn't really clarify this turn so much as he does re-state his original interpretation in new and less clear terms. Anyway, chapter 1-6 of this are great. 7 & 8 are nonsense, but that might be Fichte's fault.

If you're reading this review, you might like to look up a couple of articles:

Henrich, D., 'Fichte's Original Insight,' in *Contemporary German Philosophy*, 1982
Pippin, R., 'Fichte's supposed subjective...' in Sedgwick, S., *The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy*, and supposedly in the Cambridge Companion to Fichte, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist.